A War of Stones: Book One of the Traveler Knight

by Howard Norfolk

  “It’s just a matter of time until someone does something about the trolls and goblins infesting Fugoe,” he continued, “but with the Sund and Goloks making trouble at Kraxika, that might be a couple of years away. This Tig Morten can have you ride all over the place and fail in your mission ten times over, or just get yourself killed, and it will not damage the real Traveler Knights at all.” Sascha cried out from the pallet, as the priest cleaned and re-stitched his wound, drawing their attention for a moment. Wayland turned back to look at Lord Cole.

  “I’d like to stay here for a few days, until he is ready to ride on,” he said. “There doesn’t seem to be any hurry now to get to Rydol, and I need to think about what I am going to do when I get there.”

  Lord Coln nodded back. “As long as your men stay in good order and don’t take any liberties, it’s worth the hay and food to hear what you try and figure out.”

  The next day dawned clear as it usually did in the Vara, with a little wind off the sand and rocks to the south making devil spouts that chased each other against a backdrop of brown and deep blue. The folk and carts went out to the fields and orchards, and the blacksmith on the other side of the village started pounding on his anvil. The sound of his hammer strikes became a rhythm, ringing out through the heavy morning air.

  There were lines of kilns up on the stony hilltops to the north and potters were there cleaning some out, or getting others ready to fire when the wind was right. Wayland and his men came out into the yard and sat around the base of the old Mancan tower on some benches. Each had been given a bowl of sweetened oat porridge with whey, and they had also had a small bucket of oranges and some cured olives. A couple of the older boys came close, to stand and look at their swords and bows, and to pretend that they were with them on an adventure, dreaming of fighting bandits on the road or goblins out in the West Lands.

  They watched some girls milk the goats in the stock pens near the barn. Wayland sat and thought, eventually going back over Captain Tig Morten’s words to him. He realized now what the man had meant by Wayland’s credit being only redeemed upon the completion of the mission.

  “Oh, seven ways to hell!” Wayland swore, and he rose and kicked over his stool. “I will never complete this task! I will only be allowed to leave Gece penniless, and in disgrace.”

  He frightened one of the girls bringing in the milk, and she turned and ran back away to hide behind the side of one of the pens. This caused the other men to laugh, and it put them all at ease, as they had not had much to laugh about on the ride out of Troli. They began to sing a song about the Pendwise milk maid and her lover, using the beats of the smith’s hammer to keep time. It carried away and scandalized those in the keep and anyone else who caught the words beyond the outer wall.

  Wayland was not amused, but would also not ruin the others’ fun. He set down his bowl after finishing the food and walked off across the small court, then went out through the gate and into the village, leaving his men and the startled girl behind. He had not meant to do it, but he walked until he found the smith at the other end of the village and borrowed a whetstone to sharpen his sword.

  He climbed after that up a trail from the forge to the potter kilns along the hill, where he turned back around and looked out over the keep, the village, the olive orchards and the long fields of grain. He saw where the creeks went dry and the dry nothing of rocks, sand and ruins started. To the north from east to west ran the purple highlands of southern Gece, where most of the rain and snow fell, and left the Varmond dry. A potter saw him and came over to share his view.

  “If you help me clear out my kiln out,” the man offered, “I’ll give you half my lunch.” Wayland turned around, interested, and smiled back. He was after all a trader, no matter what little detour he was right now taking. He might learn something of used from the man about his trade. An hour later he slung out a broken pot from the bottom of the kiln and stooped down after to pick up a splinter that had fallen from it. He studied the color and fineness of the glaze that had been used.

  If Lord Wenslig was so intent on claiming the crown of Rydol, who was he to stand in his way? The very large sum of money demanded by the troll controlling Fugoe Castle dwarfed the worth of his whole small caravan, perhaps figured as it was to make it harder to deliver and pay. Perhaps Wenslig could be dealt with, and would simply bribe him off to leave Gece. It was a shameful but possible solution to his problem, and he now considered it.

  Perhaps Captain Tig Morten had picked him to go on the mission because Wayland had shown qualities during the street fight at Troli that demonstrated he might not accept such a bribe. What had he been looking for anyway when he started the company in Marmad and took up travelling? When he had looked off the Golden Slope at the Bagheri Plain and saw Kraxika besieged, he had felt the urge to be involved in it. He had anticipated that in the future he would somehow be involved in that war, something that seemed foolish now, since he was headed in the opposite direction for duty out in the West Lands.

  He turned over the pot shard and looked at the back of it. The glaze was less certain, darker and burnt. Whatever his decision, it would have two sides to it like the piece of pot, and he would have to consider both those sides carefully before he made his choice. He flung it out, to spin through the air and shatter against a rock on the down slope, and the fragments of it were then hidden in the weeds.

  He returned to the keep’s yard a few hours later carrying his belts and his weapons, his body sweaty and his traveling clothes dirtier. He felt a bit wiser now though, having thought of some interesting ways to work through the circumstances he had been thrown down into. Inside the wall was a clean trough that he now used to wash himself off. He picked his swords and belts up afterwards and went on into the hall.

  Sascha lay sleeping on his pallet, looking better now that he had in days. The other men were doing little chores on the tables or playing a game involving a cup and dice out on the floor before the fireplace. Lord Coln’s men were ostensibly watching over them, but some had started to play along for the small pots of black coins and little silver pennies that went back and forth. The usual bustle of chores that took place in a hall was mostly in abeyance, probably because they were there.

  Later before supper, as Wayland wrote some notes and watched another pot of stew go up above the fire for his men, Lord Coln came back from working on a well out in one of the fields. He went into his solar to change and refresh himself, and after that the stew was served around to the band of travelers, this time with tasty loafs of olive bread.

  Coln had the glass cup brought out again, and he drank from it as he watched the men eat. As the meal finished up, he turned his attention over to Wayland.

  “Have you profitable today in your thoughts?” he asked him.

  “I visited you smith today, then went up on the kiln hill. I helped one of the potters fix his for the next firing.”

  “You put a scare into one of my daughters this morning when you shouted, and it made the goats skittish,” Coln said. “And that song made all my women decide to eat in the solar tonight. I hope that it was worth it.”

  “I may have thought of something that could work,” Wayland admitted. “I would call it less than noble, but I will pay you back for your lost milk by telling you of it, and you can reckon how wise a course it is for yourself.”

  “Agreed,” Lord Coln replied, and chuckled, perhaps relishing the small suspense and speculation he could hold until it was revealed.

  Later they went up onto the top of the old Mancan tower, something Wayland had wished to do so since he saw it, and he counted it as a favor now being done for him. It was all of smoothed stone with narrow mortared seams, cleverly vaulted inside for the stairway. The rim of the battlement was a circle of crenellations that had seen uncounted changes of the guard, of attacks and defenses, and had survived the collapse of the old empire into the four kingdoms that now existed.

  “When you begin to see their faces, then you have be
en up here too long, in that dream,” Lord Coln told him, as he walked around and lit some of the torches set into the stones, causing the tower top to illuminate and outshine the red evening glow still hanging in the western sky. He stopped and sat down on the wall, took out a pipe, and began to fix its bowl for smoking.

  Wayland also walked around the tower top as he waited for Lord Coln, and he thought about what he would say, and what he would not say. He liked the tower, and vowed that he would remember it always, for as long as he lived.

  “So what came to you,” the lord of Honot asked him, “as you helped Serino fix his kiln?” He had lit up his pipe, and now he made the bowl glow red by drawing in the smoke.

  “Have you heard of something called the lord’s trick?” Wayland asked him.

  “We are an old family,” Coln said, as an answer. “We have been on this land for many centuries in one form or another, so the chances are that I probably have. How does it go?”

  “I sense that ill-will exists between several of the Gecic noble houses. Are you familiar with the river war in Tolwind, about fifty years ago?”

  “I’ve heard of it, yes,” he said.

  “King Eman of Appon fought off a Wellish invasion, but in doing so he made himself a pauper. What he did then was done out of desperation, and this is how it went. He picked one of his great barons and began a quarrel with him. Troops gathered on both sides, but then Eman reminded all of them that he was their lawful king, and the baron was defeated.”

  “He paid off his debts by selling the baron’s possessions and rights to the others. Then a few years later he did the same thing to the baron of Rostrum’s Mark. Now, those who had supported him up until then had benefitted, but they now saw his ways and got nervous. When he began to quarrel with a third baron, they all felt their turn would come in due time, and so they rebelled.”

  “It put Norand the Pious on the throne instead,” Lord Coln remarked, nodding as he understood how the allegory might fit into their current situation. “You think that Gece and Rydol are full of corruption and fear, and that the travelers are being used as a neutral entity to try and perform this restoration. Perhaps with the countess being so close to Grotoy, it has placed Wenslig and Erich Fork Beard only a few moves away from outright war, but I think they will not make those moves. It’s a lot to wonder about, and not to know.”

  He looked off the tower and took a drag from his pipe. “Your viewpoint of the world and of Gece is very harsh, but it is also I think correct. However there would have to be a real love for Lord Wenslig among the council of magis and populace of the county, for things to swing his way. I for one have not seen it.”

  “But do they love Sunnil?” Wayland asked him.

  “To me she is just a parchment ruler who was hardly ever in residence, but I am farther away from the court than most. If there is some dissatisfaction, or a way to affect their loyalty, you will have to go and sniff it out in Rydol.”

  “Yes, I should let them approach me and tell me the way it is,” Wayland said.

  “And this is how you should do it,” Coln offered. “You need to go and swish off your hat to them all and build up their support, or rattle your sword and make them worry about the grand prince’s displeasure. Have you heard of something called the lord’s stick?”

  Wayland nodded. “It’s called the black stick in Ballatch. The story goes that a lord saw a drover bringing cows to the market. He took a piece of burned wood and ran it along their flanks, marking them with the ash. He said to the drover, I think that your cows are sick, and you must now pay a fine of surety, in case the buyer of one comes back and complains to me.”

  “The man was outraged, but of course it was his lord and right next to him stood a knight and an archer. So the man paid the lord what he asked, on top of his regular portion. Pretty soon, all that needed to happen to collect that type of money on the road was to have a man stand there with a black stick.”

  “That’s a dangerous business to get engaged in,” Lord Coln said to him, pointing with the bowl of his pipe as he held the stem in his hand. “But that stick is what you need. These people don’t know you, but they know the Traveler Knights and the Grand Prince’s soldiers. They won’t make fun of you if you try and carry the stick. Go too hard with it through, and it will come back on the travelers, or someone will send out their archers after you. Your own credit could be rolled over into a bounty, and all the roads through Gece will be closed to you.”

  “The travelers have some power, but they are all occupied right now, with the road in jeopardy. Everyone seems very uninterested in what Rydol might do, or is doing. It’s like they want to be able to act surprised by what happens out in the West Lands. The harder I ask their opinions, the more they turn their heads away from me.”

  “Their oversight my benefit you and your stick, and you should not play freely with your charge. What will happen to these ransoms and the countess if you make mistakes? They are real people, and you risk their lives. And what if you do succeed in part or in full? I think a man like you might succeed, somehow.”

  Lord Coln was right, Wayland realized. What would he get if he pulled it off? The death of Anton Sobrezek and the sureness of the succession of the Krag might have been seen as a favorable windfall by the Grand Prince, and he might now, like Tig Morten, be expecting something more. Wayland had detested the attack on Sascha and did not feel one bit of guilt at the outcome of the fight. Could they all be on the right of it?

  “I may have overlooked that myself,” Wayland conceded. “Who else is there but myself, to do such a messy thing?” Lord Coln nodded his head to Wayland and tapped out his pipe.

  “I am just a little lord here on the edge of the sands. I pay my tithe and send my men off to war as they tell me to. I do think this though: if the Grand Prince mobilizes the state and brings his troops down the Golden Slope to fight, it won’t matter much who is ruling in Rydol. Whatever you decide to do, you should do it quick.”

  The next morning a small column appeared on the twisting road that followed the base of the northern hills. They approached the village, turned off into it, and then rode in through the keep’s gate. When Wayland saw the men he realized the torches that Lord Coln had lit the night before upon the tower top had probably served as a signal out to them. They were led in by two young men riding in an old black chariot, of the type used by the Mancans when the Varmond was still wet and covered over in grass. They men jumped down and handed the traces off to a groom, then walked up to where Lord Coln waited with his family near the entrance to the hall. The other riders dismounted and led their horses off toward barn, or took them directly out to other stables.

  The charioteers were obviously Lord Coln’s two sons, and they now greeted their father, their mother and the pack of sisters. They saw Sascha, who had been sitting up and taking air, and they came over and briefly glowered down at him and said something about his wounds. One made a rude gesture, and then they chuckled and went on inside the great hall.

  “Your sons seem to know Sascha?” Wayland asked Lord Coln later.

  “Yes. He has been down this road a few times before, and he tried to sneak over my wall one night about a year ago. If he is hale and sober, you can find few road guides in southern Gece better than Sascha of the Krag. But where his own nose leads him is another issue entirely.”

  They went back into the great hall and saw that a large noon-day meal was being put out for the returning soldiers. Now Coln’s wife and daughters came and went freely through the hall and the doors, laughing, brightening the long room as they helped with the table and the kitchen. Wayland now saw what Sascha might have been after. They had gotten some advanced word about Wenslig pulling back out of the West Lands, but the story was now presented in full detail.

  “We were called us up to fight the goblins and trolls advancing from Fugoe,” Coln’s son Berus said to him over the table as they ate. “But when we got down to the west arm of the Gure River near Krolo, they ha
d already mostly pulled back over the edge of the Priwak to the Dimm and formed an alliance to fight against a thring called Sterina. I bet that will be a nasty business. ”

  “I’m not sure how a war between the monsters in the Priwak affects things,” Wayland said, with some concern about the shift of the enemy’s army.

  Miro chewed up a great mouthful of fried fish and swallowed it before answering back. “No one really knows. Usually the strongest thring residing there in the Dimm is in charge of the rest and causes all the trouble. But the talk is that a lot of the old ones have all disappeared. Now they are fighting over who controls the Priwak Mountains and the Stones. That’s what they call the chain of islands that run out across the middle of lake Aven.”

  “How did you find all this out?” Wayland asked him.

  “Outriders talk you know, when they are moving away from each other.” After he had thought about that, Wayland figured this new information into his plans.

  “So does the troll still hold the countess and his other hostages at Fugoe Castle?”

  “Some of the beasts said she was no longer there, but that was not the general agreement between the men. Why Lord Wenslig didn’t try to go up the hill and break everyone out of the dungeon no one really knows. Too risky I guess, or he chose as he did for his own ambition. The rumor was that someone of higher authority was now coming in to arrange for the ransoms.”

  “I guess he could be called prudent then,” Wayland thought out loud, but that was just something to say to make conversation. He had to accept the bad news and continue moving forward with his mission. There were many ways to explain Lord Wenslig’s behavior, though his motivation seemed self serving and had been contrary to what some of the men had felt. Now he had disbanded the levy and sent them home.